"Dolly - who has been wed to Carl for 44 years - said: "I usually get up at 3am. I don't require a lot of sleep and if I get tired, I'll take a powernap during the day.

"When my Carl is awake, I'll put on my make-up and roll my hair a little, because I don't want to look bad for him, do I?"

I'm not saying I can do this, but I do make an effort when I can. Some days are spent in pajamas (truth be told), but other days I wear what would make Ben happy. Why? Because I love him, and men are very visual...and I like him to be visual with me

I know this is a pretty anti-feminist way of thinking, and women these days are more likely/encouraged to do what they want instead of what anyone else; which is fine. It's certainly a great step out of bloomers for those of us with a little more tiger in their spirits. But that doesn't mean you leave your man out in the cold! A good marriage is made of gifts. The gift of service (he cleans the kitchen), gifts of voice (you actually tell each other you love each other), gifts of sight (your smile, your appearance, your demeanor), gifts of intimacy (sex is important! Don't think it isn't!).

So anyway, I have to get my day started. I just wanted to pass along Dolly's words of wisdom :)

I'm watching "Honey I Shrunk the Kids" with the kids (it's their first time), but there is equal amounts of commercials as movie playing.

So there is a commercial for a Dreamie.

Dreamie.com "It's a top sheet, it's a bottom sheet, all in one!"

It's a sleeping bag.

Okay, this is a lecture+lab series. In order to understand my mental meanderings, you're going to have to watch this 20 minute clip from Mike Rowe:Mike Rowe on Discovery Realization and Lamb Castration

Once you've done that, we can begin

This was something I'm still wrapping my head around. There is so much behind what he's saying that leads me down a dozen mental trails; but it was his, "if I was wrong about this one thing" that reminded me of a college class I had (a million years ago). (okay, really only about 8 years ago.)

The prof. was examining Frost poetry ("the road not taken"), and said he had a teacher once who was teaching it completely wrong. He was saying the author took the main road; and my prof. suggested that maybe the poem actually said he took the side road not commonly taken. This made more sense to him when he read it. And his teacher said, "Oh. I hadn't thought of that. Yes, that makes more sense."

That just leads me to think that there are things that I feel just aren't right, even though authorities and experts say they are. And maybe they could be wrong about what we accept as truth. Goodness knows society and mankind are constantly rearranging what we accept as normal as it is. Jim Crow laws were around in my parents' day. That just would not fly today, thankfully. 75% of Americans disagreed with interracial marriages in 1983 (down to something like 17% now). Women (of any color) weren't able to vote until 1920. That is really unreal for me to internalize. I haven't met many people, or women, who are freaked out by that fact, but it freaks me out. Because if it is something they can give to us, it is also something they can take away, which is why the outcry and outrage regarding the Patriot Act really should have gone somewhere farther than internet forums. Because the underlying issue is our independence: Americans are built by a culture of rebels...puritanical rebels, but rebels nonetheless. We moved West out of England (or Scotland, for some of us) to seek a greater freedom for ourselves and our families. We were able to do crazy things like go to the moon, reinvigorate agriculture (which is a dying breed, may I say), appreciate God's splendor in Yellowstone, Yosemite, Black Hills, Mesa, South Dakota's mountains, Pennsylvania's forests, California's beaches...it is just an amazingly beautiful nation which sparks poets and artists to expand their ideas to wider areas which in turn reshape our cultural asthetics. Any censoring or limiting of this explorative mindset of life goes against the grains sowed into this land.

But I digress.

So if big things like voting can change, maybe little things can change if we just spoke up sometimes. And not just in political arenas: if you've been reading this for a while, you know I have this huge conflict with American suburban evangelical churches. I can hardly put my finger on what exactly it is. It's more of an umbrella of apathy and avoidance. I spent a few years thinking, "I'll be part of the solution and work with the authorities within to make the church stronger." Since that's what they call the congregation to arms about regularly: more converts, more evangelizing, more cell groups.

But that's not what they need....and that's another blog post.

Anyway, Mike Rowe's presentation just got me thinking.

I was reading through this today, and I came across a page that made a lot of sense to me.

The four gospels are generally broken down by to whom they are speaking. So Matthew is speaking as a Jewish Christian to Jews; Mark is a Jewish Christian speaking to Romans; Luke is a Gentile Christian doctor speaking to Gentiles; and John was a Jewish Christian speaking to Greeks. Their different audiences make a difference with what details they include. So, like, Matthew will have a lot more details about Jewish history and ceremonies because it had particular relevance to Jewish readers.

So I got to page 54, and he was speaking about something that was personal to me, which is kind of what I've been missing for a long time. Now, I don't think this is a breakthrough day for me, and I'm going to be a different person after today. This is more along the lines of feeling comforted that someone understands my unique position as a Christian, just as Mark understood Romans' unique position.

Mark starts with one time when he met Billy Graham: "Since every presentation of the gospel is culturally expressed, the form of its presentation must continually change as the culture changes, while the content of the gospel remains unchanged and truthful. For example, Billy Graham's booklet "Steps to Peace with God," presents the gospel in terms of peace. It was designed for people who had suffered through a horrendous World War and were desperately longing for peace. God has used it in the lives of may thousands of people in past years. But younger people who have never experienced the horrors of a war like the World Wars and Vietnam are less likely than their parents and grandparents to identify with the thrust of a gospel of peace."

So, while the content is still applicable and truthful, the focus is different in order to be culturally and personally relevant to a certain group of people. He continues,

"Likewise, the late Bill Bright's Campus Crusade for Christ presentation of the four spiritual laws explains the gospel in terms of four laws that regulate the spiritual world in the same way that four laws govern the physical world, according to Newtonian physics. But younger generations familiar with quantum physics and chaos theory are increasingly less likely to agree with the finality of Newtonian physics or natural laws. They are therefore less likely to relate to a gospel presentation of spiritual laws.

"Sometimes you hear the gospel presented in terms of a private religious experience and a loving personal relationship with Jesus. This approach to the gospel made sense to a countercultural hippie generation that had abandoned traditional institutions and authorities (such as the church) in favor of direct and unmediated encounters with God through everything from alternative religions to drug use. But ...."

and this is where my ears perked up.

"But younger people from broken homes in a shattered lonely society desire a community of faith in which to journey and are less likely to see the appeal in an autonomous faith. In addition, people who were raised apart from the church often have less resistance to ancient traditions and institutions. These are foreign experiences that intrigue them, rather than bad memories that repel them."

This is probably why the church of Mars Hill in Seattle works so well for people and families my age: They focus a LOT on community groups. Community groups meet together over a meal and study the Bible together in order to have a closer relationship with Jesus.

This is very different from my experiences with small groups or cell groups, which (to my cynical heart) seem to be giving their list of small/cell groups another line, which proves the church's worth and prosperity.

Anyway, it was a very comforting read for me this morning. Mark Driscoll really has his finger over the pulse for a large group of Christians. It's kind of like spaghetti sauce (stay with me on this): There was a study done by a research group in the 80s to see what kind of sauce people prefered. At the time it was basically Ragu` or Prego, and both were rather thin sauces. Well, this study found out that 1/3 preferred thin sauce, 1/3 prefered moderately thin and spicy sauce, and an entire 1/3 liked chunky sauce.

The problem was: no one was making chunky sauce at the time; to which Prego said, incredulously, "are you telling me 1/3 of our customers are not being served what they actually like?!" After which Prego came up with a huge spread of chunky sauces, and the 1/3 (and some converts) rejoiced.

That's what it seems like my generation is: the lost 1/3. But Mark Driscoll saw this disenfranchised group and spoke to us in a way that we could uniquely relate, and I am so grateful.

This is the first time I have seen Anderson Cooper look shaken about what he is witnessing in Haiti. Right now he is reporting the dump trucks filled with bodies, taking them to unmarked and undocumented mass graves.

My body reacts to the grief this country is experiencing. I am glad many people I know have been able to be taken to Haiti to help aid efforts. But it is heartbreaking to watch this from thousands of miles away.

There are so many agencies that are helping get food, water, aid and medical care to the island; we can all help, even if we can't be there in person. If you can, please donate something to help:

The American Red Cross

Mercy Corps

World Vision Donation Center

Unicef

Even Whitehouse.gov is putting aid for the Haitians front and center

Samaritan's Purse

So, these are some ways you can help. I know there are also local fire departments that are sending men over, so if you called your local police and fire departments, you can probably find ways to help.

Ben was telling me some stories he heard about China recently, since their new Chinese employees have just come over to visit the office for the first time. Apparently, there was a monster snowstorm in Beijing recently, and the entire city was shut down due to snow.

The Chinese government's response to this was to send 350,000 men to Beijing and dig the city out in a day. That is really a remarkable feat, to coordinate that much manpower for one city.

I just think about the whole world coming together to help Haiti through this, and I sincerely pray people are helped with great haste, thoroughness and compassion.

I think it is also important for America, in particular, to ignore mediaheads who are distracting the focus of this crisis away from the devastated country, and onto their own agendas. Now is the time to save lives, and support those who are able to fulfill this.

This happened to Nova, and a little bit in Glenn; but it is really freaking people out that Conrad is orange.

(yes, orange)

I think people are worried are worried about jaundice, but really this is a very healthy symptom:

"Carotenemia is a benign condition most commonly occurring in vegetarians and young children. Carotenemia is more easily appreciated in light-complexioned people, and it may present chiefly as an orange discolouration of the palms and the soles in more darkly pigmented persons.[4] Carotenemia does not cause selective orange discoloration of the conjunctiva of the eyes (orange coloration over the sclera), and thus is usually easy to distinguish from the yellowing of the skin caused by bile pigments, in states of jaundice. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carotenosis)"

Since most of what he eats is orange (carrots, Gerber meat/vegetables, yams, apricots, peaches...all orange), and he has very fair skin, he just turns orange. I've cut back on how much orange foods he is eating and replaced them with other things like stewed sweet potatoes or squash (which is still a little yellow), which taste similar to what he's used to...just not orange. His color has toned down a little, but he's still orange enough that women ask about it. Even my OB/GYN and his nurse were worried the first time they saw him (when he was at his peak of orange); the funny thing is, they are both black, as are the other nurses in this station. So the changes of them seeing their own babies orange are nil: just us pale Scottish folk

So, nothing's wrong :) He's just a healthy baby.

So excited!! I was just browsing Digg, and I ran across this article:

(PhysOrg.com) -- A new research project has shown that people who perceive numbers visually, and who see sequences of numbers as visual patterns, have better memories for dates and events in the past than people who do not.

The condition is known as time-space synesthesia (also called spatial-sequence synesthesia), a neurological condition in which the senses combine in unusual ways. A person with the condition sees numbers as existing in three-dimensional space, so for example, the year 1980 may seem further away visually than the year 1995. Others may see years as a 3D shape such as a spiral staircase, or months arranged in an circle. The visual responses to the numbers are involuntary, and the synesthete may be unaware for years that their experiences are not shared by others.

There are many types of synesthesia, such as the most common type, grapheme-color synesthesia, in which numbers or letters are always associated with colors, so the number eight might always appear orange, for example, or the word train may always look blue. Other synesthetes may associate words with taste, or sounds to color or images.

Wikipedia:In one common form of synesthesia, known as grapheme → color synesthesia or color-graphemic synesthesia, letters or numbers are perceived as inherently colored,[5][6] while in ordinal linguistic personification, numbers, days of the week and months of the year evoke personalities.[7][8] In spatial-sequence, or number form synesthesia, numbers, months of the year, and/or days of the week elicit precise locations in space (for example, 1980 may be "farther away" than 1990), or may have a (three-dimensional) view of a year as a map (clockwise or counterclockwise).[9][10][11] Yet another recently identified type, visual motion → sound synesthesia, involves hearing sounds in response to visual motion and flicker.[12] Over 60 types of synesthesia have been reported by people,[13] but only a fraction have been evaluated by scientific research.[14] Even within one type, synesthetic perceptions vary in intensity [15] and people vary in awareness of their synesthetic perceptions.[1

This is just fascinating. I've tried to explain this to a couple people, and it just sounds weird. The numbers are colors? Why? Do you choose the colors? (no) Like, my favorite day is Thursday, November 16th...BECAUSE that day is entirely lavendar. Thursday, November and 16 are all lavendar/purple. Monday is red, Tuesday is light blue, Wednesday is green, Thursday is purple, Friday is brown, Saturday is dark blue, Sunday is yellow.

This is just the way it has always been in my head. To remember phone numbers, I just remember the pattern of colors. I just never knew there was a name for it! WooHoo! :D

Things have turned around for the better in such a major way today.

We have curtains ordered for the house, which is going to make a BIG difference. Right now we don't have anything except for blinds in the front room (which is helpful for privacy). But we found drapes we really like, and they were all on sale. I am just so excited to have honest to goodness drapes for our house :)

Then, we have made HUGE breakthroughs with Nova's reading. I found Explode the Code, which she is just blazing through. It is finally in a medium that she is excited about, and she is really engaged with. This is just an enormous break from the frustration we have been wading through with this subject. She has probably spent 4 hours today doing Phonics on her own! So awesome.

I'm finished Christmas shopping, and I just need to wrap stuff! Also a huge thing off my list.

The kitchen's clean, laundry is almost done, our roof isn't leaking, we're warm in our house and everyone is healthy :) Life is good.